Astonishingly, these cheetahs, whose instinct is to hunt for food, decided to just play with this baby impala.

The cheetahs first knocked the antelope down, but then they remained with the young animal and they were just licking it off and putting their paws on its head.

It seems as if these three cheetahs simply weren’t very hungry…

  
…this one licks off the neck of the antelope.

Why don’t the cheetahs kill the antelope?
It might have something to do with the antelope’s behavior: If the animal doesn’t struggle or run away to free itself, the cheetah’s instinctual drive goes haywire and doesn’t send the necessary instructions to kill. Mix this and a stomach that’s already full and the predator views its prey in a completely different light.

According to one source this story indeed has a happy ending; after one tense moment when it looked as though one cheetah would bite the impala on the neck, the youngster ran away. On the other hand, some people commented that the antelope has actually been killed and eaten finally. Even others claim that these photos have been manipulated with photography software.

In this context, remember the leopard and the mouse story?

So what do we want to believe today…?